A prisoner has been sentenced to six months in jail after racially abusing a prison officer in a ‘barbaric’ tirade.
William Robinson, 29, who is currently serving 83 months for robbery, was sentenced to a further six months consecutively at Manchester Crown Court after he called a prison officer the n-word and threatened to kill him in a 20 minute tirade of abuse.
In April 2020, Mr Robinson was caught on bodycam footage at HMP Forest Bank, calling the officer the n-word and 'black c***' while also threatening the officer’s son. He pleaded not guilty but was convicted of racially or religiously aggravated disorderly behaviour with intent to cause harassment, alarm or distress, on July 29.
Prosecutor Hayley Bennett referred to a victim impact statement made by the prison officer, which said he expected abuse in his line of work but that this racial abuse was ‘barbaric. She went on to say that there was no serious psychological harm caused by the abuse.
Defending, Anna Chestnutt said that the abuse was ‘utterly out of character’ for Mr Robinson, who has a young son and a black brother-in-law. She added that Mr Robinson accepted his words were ‘demeaning and upsetting’.
Sentencing, Judge Rachel Smith said it was Mr Robinson’s intention to demean and distress the officer and that he chose his words deliberately because the officer was black. The judge explained that, because he abused a public sector worker, she increased the sentence from four months to six months.
She said: “It was a deliberate attempt to abuse the officer because he was black and cause him significant distress with threats to kill him."
In June 2021, Mr Robinson was jailed after trying to steal a watch worth more than £182,000 from a man weeks after stealing thousands of pounds of cash from a G4S van making a delivery.
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